Records show Stark County students seldom bring weapons to school or threaten violence. In talking about safety, superintendents and schools resource officers stressed the necessity of protecting students from not only outside intruders but also from possible internal dangers.

Louisville City Schools Superintendent Steve Milano said he can assure parents the district takes every precaution possible to keep kids safe — from putting cameras at building entrances to practicing lock-down drills with students.

But what he can't do, he said, is promise parents their children won't be harmed at school.

"I don't know if I can guarantee any child's safety anymore," Milano said.

Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 students and six staff members dead. The Repository decided to explore how school safety has evolved in Stark County in light of that event and other mass homicides — including Chardon High School in February 2012 — that have occurred in the past several years.

While records show Stark County students seldom bring weapons to school or threaten violence, superintendents and school resource officers stressed the necessity of protecting students from outside intruders in addition to possible internal dangers.

Minerva Local Schools Superintendent Joe Chaddock said there's no question safety has changed at schools in the past several years.

"I think in light of all the tragedies that have went on in the country, safety and security has been a priority," he said. "There's been a huge sense of urgency."

MONITORING INTERNAL THREATS

Sandy Valley Superintendent David Fischer said when he thinks about safety differences he's seen in the past few years, he first thinks about the increased importance placed on students' mental health.

"I think they've always had pressures," he said. "It just seems that students carry a little more stress than they have in years past."

Jackson Local Schools Assistant Superintendent Barry Mason said the district has resisted having a "knee-jerk reaction" to school safety in light of national shootings. Rather than going out and spending money on gadgets, officials have opted to stress relationships with students instead, in hopes that they will be able to find out about and stop potential threats of violence.

The school looked to the Ohio Attorney General's Office for teacher training about how to be proactive in tuning in to what's happening with students and reporting anything they see that might be worrisome.

At Louisville, teachers have learned to watch what kids are doodling or writing in their notebooks, Milano said, and report anything that's alarming.

Steve Humphrey, supervisor of safety and security at Canton City Schools, said staff members have become more aware of the possibility of an internal threat and are also paying more attention to students.

"There's a million red flags," he said.

Keeping an eye on students is a job that extends to law enforcement as well. Dave Trubisky, the resource officer for Jackson Local Schools, doesn't just handle fights and make sure doors are locked — he also makes a point of getting to know students by chatting with them while they're at lunch or by guest speaking in their classes.

Page 2 of 3 - "If things are going on inside the high school or outside, they talk about it," he said.

Deputy Melissa Bogunovich has been a resource officer for Marlington Local Schools for nearly a decade and has formed relationships with individual students and even entire families. She said even parents seem more comfortable approaching her for advice on how to handle trouble with their children at home.

Chaddock said the biggest safety push in his district is connecting at-risk youth with mental health services. The school buildings hold offices for employees of Quest Prevention Services and Pathway — people who can work with the students at school and with the family at their home.

Aside from professionals, districts also rely on students to let them know if there's something going on inside or outside of school that is unusual.

Canton City Schools is preparing to launch an anonymous texting system for the middle and high schools that will allow parents and students to send information about suspicious behavior or give other safety tips to the district. It's a switch from a safety hotline, which wasn't getting a big response, Humphrey said.

A data request made by The Repository regarding incidents of violence and behavioral problems in the county's public schools shows that since the beginning of the 2008-09 school year, students occasionally have relayed threats made by their peers to school officials, and their reports were taken seriously — many of the students threatening violence were suspended.

Milano said one of the most obvious shifts he's noticed in terms of school safety is kids coming forward more often to report behavior or comments that make them nervous.

"Our kids have been some of of our greatest resources here," he said.

WHAT'S GOING ON IN STARK SCHOOLS

For the most part, Stark County's schools are relatively violence- and weapon-free.

Overwhelmingly, 3 1/2 years worth of data about schools shows the most common behavioral problems have not been fights or assaults but classroom disruptions or disobedience — such as students using profanity in class or talking back to a teacher.

But nearly every district that responded to the Repository's data request reported situations where students had weapons — usually knives or box cutters — in the buildings.

There were also a few instances of students bringing firearms — a category that includes pellet and airsoft guns — or firearm look-a-likes to school or onto a bus. The consequence across districts was routinely out-of-school suspension or expulsion, even if the firearm wasn't real.

In talking about weapons, multiple superintendents stressed the importance of determining student intent when a weapon is found at school.

Brent May, superintendent of Plain Local Schools, said the topic is a "slippery slope." Sometimes, he said, a student might have a hunting or fishing knife in his or her backpack and forget to take it out before coming to school.

Page 3 of 3 - That's occasionally the case at Tuslaw Local Schools, superintendent Al Osler said, adding that there's a difference between possessing a weapon and pulling it out to threaten someone.

He said districts need to use common sense — it's still wrong to bring a weapon to school, he said, but the infraction should be kept in perspective.

"There's that fine line between appropriate reaction and overreaction," Osler said.

To get a better idea about what's going on in schools, The Repository pulled behavioral interruptions and corresponding disciplinary action data for each public school district from the Ohio Department of Education website for the school years 2008-09 through 2012-13.

The Repository also requested similar data from each district for the years 2010-11 through the present, specifically asking for incident descriptions of any assaults; verbal or physical threats; possession or use of a weapon; arson; larceny/robbery; classroom disruption; arrest; and sexual, verbal or physical harassment. All but three of the county's 17 districts had responded to the request in time to be included in this article.

While there is some specific information about safety included in this article, superintendents said talking about school safety requires a balance between providing parents and community members with important safety information and allowing the schools to keep some of their safety tactics private.

Differences between state-provided and district-provided data

The state Department of Education tracks behavioral interruptions and corresponding consequences at schools, but some of the information is masked, spokesman John Charlton said. Because of student privacy laws, the state doesn't publish information about infrequent discipline incidents to protect the identity of the students involved.

So if there are less than 10 instances of a behavioral interruption in a district, the category shows up as empty — which explains why some Stark County districts appear to have no cases of students bringing weapons to school, even though the data provided by the individual district says otherwise.